crabapple pie
by the red feather
Summary: Dean moves on and moves forward as best he can, until the past catches up. A hopeful coda to 5.22.


Lisa lets him in and leads him over to the couch in her beige-and-blue living room, where he sits very quietly and very still, staring at his shoes and trying incredibly hard to make the world around him disappear by sheer force of will. She brings him back a cold beer, hands it over and sits down next to him on the couch as he grips the bottle tight, letting the temperature numb his fingers as he tries not to remember frosty windows in Detroit.

He's not sure how long he sits there, just holding the bottle and staring at his shoes. He wants to start in on the beer and lose himself in it, but it's not even close to the amount of alcohol he feels like _imbibing_ right now – the bottle of whiskey he really wants is out in the Impala, in the trunk next to Sam's duffle bag, and he can't even begin to deal with looking at that shit right now. It's Lisa's hand on his back, gentle and light, that finally makes him start, and when he turns to her she's staring at him with a million and one questions in her eyes, _what the hell happened to you_ looking like it's pretty high on the list.

But she doesn't ask any of the questions she might have, just moves the hand on his back in slow, comforting circles, kinda like he remembers his mom doing when he was really little (back when the only things to cry over were broken toys and stubbed toes) and that's good – for now, that's good.

* * *

It's been exactly seven days since Sam died. _Sam died. Sam's dead._ That's never been permanent before, never been an idea he's allowed to stay in his reality for very long. Now it's practically the _defining_ element of his reality, because absolutely nothing makes _sense_ without Sam. It feels like the whole world should be spinning off its axis, tumbling into oblivion, fading away or _something_ because _Sam's not here_ – but that's the only reason it _isn't._ Waking up, taking a shower, walking, eating, sleeping, _living,_ all of it makes no sense at all because _Sam isn't here,_ and if not for a stupid, _stupid_ promise he'd already be scrambling, grasping at straws to make this reality disappear, would be on his knees at the nearest crossroads clawing at the dirt.

It's when Dean realizes this (_Sam died last week, Sammy's gone, my little brother's dead and I'm alive_), when he's been sleeping in Lisa's spare bedroom for a week, that he also realizes that he has absolutely no clue what he's going to do now. He hasn't unpacked anything he's brought into the house, is still living out of his duffle bag like this is just another motel, just another stop on the road, but it _can't_ be, not this time, because he promised Sam.

So after Ben leaves for school and Lisa leaves for work, Dean goes out to the trunk of the Impala, unloads the bags, and brings them inside to sort through his stuff. He unpacks his clothes, runs everything through the washer and dryer Lisa's told him he's welcome to use, and then stuffs his socks and shirts and jeans in the drawers of the dresser in the guest room. There's more room in the dresser than he'll ever need for clothes and a whole empty closet besides.

He's brought in Sam's bag too, partly out of habit and partly because the (shrinking) rational part of his brain says that he should probably go through Sam's stuff, decide what to do with it and whether to keep it. Most of what's in the bag is just clothes, shirts and jeans and socks and underwear. There's a toothbrush and a few ties and Sam's very cheap suit, folded up ridiculously neatly and tucked into a corner of the bag. The laptop is in Sam's bag too, because it had always been his computer really, Dean isn't all that great at working the damn thing – but when he finds what's in the bottom of the bag, tucked inside a balled-up pair of absolutely _ripe_ socks, he can't do anything but stop and stare and fight, fight, fight to hold back tears even though there's no one there to hide them from.

He slips the cord of the amulet over his head, the pendant resting heavy and familiar on his chest, and then slowly, methodically, takes everything out of the dresser and packs it back into his duffle.

* * *

After a month and a half of sleeping in the spare bedroom, Lisa helps him find a job and, after he's saved a little money, an apartment, because Dean sure as hell isn't going to sit around being pitied and doing nothing, no matter how much he feels like absolute shit – plus he can't really find an excuse to go on living with a woman that he barely even knows, sitting at her table and eating her food without doing _anything_ else (except drinking, occasionally crying, and _not_ unpacking). He's not going to do the charity thing, promises be damned, even though Lisa looks worried when he tells her that he's planning on leaving, reminds him that he's welcome for as long as he needs a place to stay. He says thanks but no thanks, because Lisa's been great to him but she's still a stranger in most of the ways that count, and she's got a kid to worry about, a kid that isn't his and who doesn't really know him. She doesn't need to deal with a half-dead, hollow man like him every day, doesn't need a guy who's fighting a daily, hourly urge to either go out and get blind stinking drunk or drive his car off a cliff hanging around her and her kid.

No matter what Sam might have said, Dean knows he just can't drop in and shoehorn himself into this life, this family, not right now – he doesn't fit, doesn't want to fit, doesn't have the energy now. He thinks he _could_ fit, maybe someday, but not right this second, because he's all screwed to hell and for now Sam's just going to have to – well, not _live_ with that, but you know. For now, he needs to get his shit together, because if he's going to do this apple pie crap he's damn well going to do it right. Like Sam would have done it, if Dean had made _him_ promise.

The job Lisa helps him find is at a local garage, where the work is easy and boring but pays well enough to get him rent payments and food. Plus, having something to _do_, even if it's a little mindless, is better than doing nothing, lets him be distracted from what he really _wants_ to do most days, which is to just drink himself into a stupor, just be absolutely, blissfully numb and unaware for a few hours. Sometimes he gives in and does just that. However, much to both his own disappointment and that of the guy who owns the liquor store down the street, an increasingly annoying and increasingly loud part of his brain that sounds like Sam has begun reminding him that this is probably not a good idea. The bitchy little Sam-voice in his head nags at him, reminding him that if he died from some stupid thing like alcohol poisoning or liver disease after surviving all this Apocalypse shit then that probably makes him a pretty damn pathetic excuse for a person.

Living in one place, holding down one job that isn't hunting, paying bills and buying groceries, that's really strange – but it's the living alone that really gets to him. It's weird having his _own_ space, sleeping under a roof that isn't Bobby's or a motel's, having a bedroom where his bed is the only one – having a bedroom at all – and where he falls asleep (or doesn't) without Sam's familiar snoring or grunting coming from a few feet away.

Living in one place also makes him incredibly aware of the fact that he really doesn't have much, in the traditional sense of the word. He's always known he doesn't have much stuff, of course – the bulk of what he actually owns is either a car or a weapon – but it's never so obvious as when he gets the keys to his apartment, walks in and realizes that he has _nothing_ to put in the place.

For the first time in years, he digs out the box of photos from Lawrence that whats-her-name, that mom he and Sam (_Sam_) saved, found in the basement of the old house. It's tucked under the false bottom of the trunk in the Impala, with the guns and the salt and the holy water that he has avoiding thinking, touching, looking at for weeks upon weeks. The box is dented and beaten up and chipped in more than a few places, first from the crash and then from the general wear and tear of being knocked around in the trunk. There's pictures and drawings and random shit from years and years and years ago locked up in this box, and Dean hasn't ever sat down and really _looked_ at it, because he isn't a candy-ass sentimentalist like Sam is – _was._ He's not even really sure why they've kept it around in the car this long, when they could've left it in Dad's lock-up or at Bobby's or something, but that night that he gets the keys to four walls that are _his_ for more than a few days or weeks or months, he sits on the floor of his apartment and goes through the box. Most of the stuff he leaves where it is, packs the box under his bed with a pile of guns and knives, but two pictures he takes out and leaves on the counter. He's not sure what he means to do with them, because he's never kept pictures around before.

Lisa sees the photos on the kitchen counter, when she comes by to drop off some food for him that first week in the apartment, and when he gets back from work the next day there are two picture frames, just cheap dollar-store things really, wrapped in a plastic bag and waiting on his doorstep. He slips the best picture of Mom and Dad into one frame, and the picture of the four of them in front of the house in Lawrence into another, and puts them on the twelve-dollar consignment-store table he's got in the living room, next to the couch Lisa got him at a garage sale.

He feels a little bit like a twelve-year-old girl, and he'd never admit it out loud, but the pictures in their dollar-store frames are his favorite things in the entire apartment.

* * *

He isn't living with Lisa anymore, but he doesn't stop seeing her. It makes sense, of course – she's the only person he knows in this town, her and Ben, and he thinks she still kinda sees him as some sort of suicide risk that it's her responsibility to keep an eye on. It's strange, having someone _new_ involved in his life that isn't a demon, an angel, or otherwise invested in the supernatural fate of the world - and it's almost stranger that he's getting to _know_ someone, which Dean hardly ever really does.

The first thing about Lisa that Dean has gotten to know is that she is really, incredibly, annoyingly, unbelievably perceptive. Sometimes that's amazing – when she doesn't push, doesn't try and make him talk, doesn't try and drag out everything he's avoiding talking about – and sometimes it's really damn annoying, the way she'll just _look_ at him, like she can tell exactly what he's not saying but she's gonna let him think that she doesn't.

It reminds him of Sam every damn time, and he really isn't sure how he feels about that.

Lisa is pretty much the only person he really talks to, and he keeps on talking to her even though he's never really _done_ that before, never had anyone besides Sam or Dad or Bobby that you talked to about important stuff _and_ regular stuff, about how your brother's dead and your life's nine kinds of screwed _and_ the fact that no, you really haven't ever paid bills or taxes before and you have no idea what to get at the grocery store.

Really, the only person besides Lisa and Ben he ever talks to is Bobby, who he'll hear from every once in a while. Bobby calls to check up on him and to pointedly _not_ talk about hunting, tiptoeing around the subject like he thinks any mention of Dean's former life will send him spiraling into a deep dark depression or something like that. Bobby, being Bobby and therefore smart, is actually probably right – Dean tends to end these conversations at the bottom of a bottle (or two or three or five), despite the shrill Sam-voice in his head bitching at him to _knock it off, you dumbass, did I die for anything or just so you could drink yourself to death?_

Cas he really hasn't heard from since he disappeared from the Impala the night that Sam died. Sometimes he thinks he sees him – sees a guy in a brown trenchcoat on the street, or something like that – but it's never really Cas. He thinks the little winged bastard might be hanging out in his dreams sometimes, skulking around in the corners of his head and keeping an eye on him or something, but those dreams are so fuzzy by the time he wakes up that there's no way to really be sure.

Lisa is different. Lisa doesn't make him want to drink or rage or cry or wonder if he's seeing angels or anything like that. In fact, Lisa is ten different kinds of amazing in ways that he hasn't ever noticed about any other woman but Cassie – not just gorgeous (and boy, is she that) but funny and patient and smart and most importantly, _still_ not running like hell in the other direction despite how much more she knows about him and his life the longer he sticks around. Privately, Dean kind of thinks that if, eleven years ago, he had spent more than a weekend with Lisa Braeden he might have been in some serious trouble, if you know what he means – because _this_ is a girl who might have changed his mind, even at twenty-something and stupid. Ben might have _really_ been his kid, and this might have _really_ been his life.

(Even more privately, Dean wonders if it would have mattered – if things wouldn't have just turned out the same damn way all the same, with Sam dead and him here and everything but the world all screwed to hell).

After seven or eight months of living in Cicero, Dean begins to think that he might be _friends_ with Lisa (since they're not living together and not sleeping together, haven't even kissed or anything in this whole time he's been here, but she and Ben come visit him all the time and the three of them go out together on the weekends and she brings him funny-smelling casseroles wrapped in tinfoil that actually taste really damn good) and he's never really _had_ that before, at least not with a woman. It's a little weird, but it's _nice_, to have someone who cares, even if he has no idea why she does. She sure isn't looking at him like he might kill himself at any minute anymore, doesn't act like she's responsible for him – but he's not entirely sure what's replaced that, so he figures "friends" is a good enough description.

He's cool with that whole "friends" thing for about two weeks after he decides on it as the definition of their relationship, which is when Lisa makes it clear what she's seeing in the future of this relationship and they end up in bed together (in the middle of the day on a Saturday, while Ben is at a friend's birthday party). The whole affair is much more of a lazy, slow kind of coming together than he's used to, but it's so _good_, amazing even, and it's the only spot in the long drag of months since that day in Stull Cemetery where he _doesn't_ think about Sam, even if only for a hazy string of moments.

When Dean's with Lisa, he thinks about her more and Sam less, which is wonderful and awful at the same time, but better than the plain old awful that's there without her, so he figures that he shouldn't complain. Still, everything that's hard-wired into him is constantly screaming _there's no way you can deserve this, not with what you've done_ and _how could you, knowing where your brother is_. When he sleeps alone, he dreams of hell, of the weight of Alistair's razor in his hand, of himself with black eyes and flecks of blood on his face sneering at Sam, bleeding and broken and lashed to the rack that Dean keeps him strapped to by _forgetting_, by letting him rot in hell without trying to pull him back up.

When he's sleeping next to Lisa, the dreams still come, but she's there when he wakes up, and if it hurts that her hand on his shoulder feels painfully smaller than Sam's, soft and light where his brother's was strong and solid, it's still better than waking up alone.

* * *

The seven days Sam's been dead turn into seven weeks, and seven weeks turn into seven months, and seven months drag on and on and on until it's been two years since his little brother died to save the world.

It's 2012 and early summer, and Dean is a regular guy with a regular job, a steady girlfriend that he's coming to realize he's probably in love with and a sort-of-stepkid that he's really kind of ridiculously fond of. Of course, he's also paying his bills and getting his paychecks under a fake name Bobby helped him set up (Stephen Dean Young, an only child from Wichita who goes by his middle name and whose parents died in a car accident). He hasn't driven the Impala any farther than Indianapolis and back in months, and the arsenal that used to be in the trunk has been carefully dispersed throughout his apartment – Dean might be willing to try _normal_, for Sam, but he isn't going to try _stupid_.

Tonight is a Friday night slowly turning into a sleepy Saturday morning, and Dean is spending the night at Lisa's like he's taken to doing most every Friday – every weekend really, even though he's still technically living in his own apartment. He's curled fairly contentedly around Lisa in bed when there's a crash that wakes him up, the sound of something smashing or breaking. Lisa, who is the heaviest sleeper Dean has ever met, just mumbles and rolls over, but instinct prompts him up and out of bed.

One cursory sweep of the house later and Dean's about to pass the noise off as raccoons or rats or possibly teenagers making a racket with Lisa's neighbor's trash cans again and go back to bed when he hears the wood floorboards in the kitchen creak like they only do when someone's walking on them. He whips around, wishing desperately that he had a weapon on him somewhere – as if he would have somewhere to put it in these damn sweatpants that Lisa's got him wearing, which yeah, are definitely comfortable but really, Dean, _sweatpants_ – and finds himself faced with what looks like, in this light, a very sheepish-looking, distinctly Sam-shaped something that has apparently tripped over its own huge feet on its way through the kitchen and towards the back door, knocking Lisa's flowerpot off the counter and onto the ground in the process.

He launches himself at it with fury white-hot behind his eyes, legs and fists striking out practiced and sure despite years of relative disuse – only to find himself quickly knocked to the kitchen floor, crushed petunias from the remains of the flowerpot grinding sticky and purple into the back of his head.

"What the hell are you, and what do you think you're doing here?" Dean asks the _thing_ that looks like Sam in the most menacing tone he can muster at three-thirty in the morning, trying to wrench his arms free so he can make with the strangling that obviously needs to be done.

"Um, looking for a beer?" the thing replies, skipping his first question entirely in a tone that's a lot more joking than it has any right to be, looking and sounding so very much like Sam that Dean isn't sure whether to hug it (and possibly cry) or punch its lights out for daring to take on Sam's face and voice.

Of course, Dean decides on promptly punching the thing that looks like his very dead brother in the face, which causes the thing to make a rather distressed, strangled noise of pain as it rocks back off of Dean's torso and clutches its nose. Dean takes its distraction as an opportunity to grab the silver knife he's quietly stashed with the rest of Lisa's fancy cutlery, because this shapeshifter bitch is going down _now._ He has just enough time to strike out and make a gash in its arm with the knife before it's got him in a hold again, apparently unaffected by the silver.

So, not a shapeshifter then. Not a revenant either.

Dean manages to get out a slightly muffled but well-enough-articulated _Christo_ as a second test while the thing wrestles him to the floor, but it doesn't flinch or recoil, and even though it's dark in the house he can see its face well enough to see that its eyes haven't turned black – or white or red or yellow – it still just looks like _Sam_, maybe a little older and more tired but still _Sam_. When Dean's been very firmly knocked to the floor yet again, the Sam-thing grins and says "You're out of practice, Dean. That's _twice_ I pinned you."

Dean's brain is saying _no, no, can't be true can't be true can't really be you_ but his voice isn't listening and he manages to croak out _Sam?_ – and when it answers by letting him up, reaching down with a hand to pull him up from the ground, his brain goes into overdrive and his heart can't decide whether to drop down into his stomach or leap up into his throat. (It settles for doing a weird, nauseating dance between stomach and throat as Dean grabs Sam's hand, stands up and gapes at _his brother_, alive and apparently well).

They get through the requisite _is it really you_ and _oh my god_ and Dean making Sam drink from the holy water he's got Lisa keeping in an old Gatorade bottle in her fridge before Dean asks _what the hell happened?_

Sam really has no idea what exactly happened, he tells Dean – he's been trying to figure it out, but mostly he's been hunting, cleaning up the mess left over from everything that went down two years ago – and that's where Dean stops him.

"Hold it. You were _alive_, this whole time?"

"…Well, not the whole time. For…a year and a half, maybe? I think that's how long it's been." To his credit, Sam actually does have the decency to look sheepish, even guilty, when he says this.

Dean just barely has time to stammer out a strangled _you stupid son of a bitch_ before punching Sam again. After he's shown Sam just how _not_ out of practice he actually is by beating his ass six ways from Sunday, he pulls him up from the floor, says "that's for being an idiot" (because he _knows_ why Sam didn't come right away, and he's the stupidest little bitch ever if he thought Dean could be happy without him), and crushes him to his chest, arms wrapping around his giant, stupid, gloriously _alive_ brother.

Sam is _here_, hugging him back with his freakishly huge Sasquatch arms, and Dean is never letting go of him ever, ever again.

Ben's the one who finds them like that, arms wrapped around each other in the kitchen like they're holding on for dear life. He blinks at them woozily and gestures at Sam with gangly twelve-year-old arms, saying _Dean, who the hell's this guy?_ and the whole thing's so ridiculous and amazing and _good_ that Dean just throws his head back and _laughs_ like he hasn't laughed in years and years and years, and even though Sam – God, _Sam_ – and Ben are staring at him like he's gone nuts he could really care less.

* * *

There's still a lot they haven't said, still a lot they should probably talk about, like the whole matter of what the hell happened to Sam and why exactly he's here, of why he _hasn't_ been here before this and what exactly he's up to now. There's also the part where sometimes lights flicker and things rattle when Sam walks past them, and the fact that he seems to be under the impression that Dean hasn't noticed.

There's also the thing where Dean is pretty sure that Sam is here because some dark, evil supernatural shit is going down somewhere, and it probably wants to get its dark, evil, grubby hands on some Winchesters or the people they care about, because that's just in the supernatural job description or something. From what Sam's told him in the last few hours, he thinks this is all working up to a point where Sam asks him to pick up right where they left off, just the two of them on the road saving people, hunting things. While there's a part of him (possibly the bigger part of him, he's not really sure) that's screaming _hell yes_, there's another part that's thinking he can't just pick up and leave, can't go right back to the way things used to be. He sure doesn't love this life – his boring as hell nine-to-five and living alone and never _going_ anywhere farther than Indianapolis in one sitting – but he loves the people in it, loves Lisa's voice and Ben's smile and the way they're starting to fit together now, the three of them. Sam _did_ that, made sure that happened, and even though it hurt like hell getting here Dean can admit that there's some parts of this apple-pie life that he isn't quite ready to drop.

So he's pretty sure there's a part of this, coming up, where they ask too much of each other, like they always do, and where they fight, like they always do, and where there will be bending and breaking and probably some fists and some tears and some blood and who the hell knows, maybe another apocalypse.

But for now they're both _alive_, sitting in Lisa's kitchen on a Saturday morning that was supposed to be sunny but looks now like it's going to rain. Sam's helping Ben work the waffle iron to make everyone breakfast, and Lisa's picking smashed petunias and dirt out of Dean's hair at the kitchen table, pretty confused and surprised but mostly, she says, just happy that he's happy.

Yeah. He's happy.


End file.
